The Cupertino Courier

Sports

Fremont's Armour wins REACH scholarship

By KEVIN SPARRER

There were 9,000 good reasons for the REACH Youth Scholarship finalists to get out of bed on the morning of May 3. And Fremont's Laine Armour can certainly give you 2,000 of them.

Armour walked away with a $2,000 scholarship when 34 REACH nominees got up early for a Wednesday morning breakfast at the San Jose Marriott to find out how the San Jose Sports Authority would distribute the $9,000 in scholarship funds.

Of the 34 nominees, only five would win scholarships in the Authority's 2006 REACH (Recognizing Excellence, Adversity, Courage and Hard Work) competition. Joining Armour as winners were Amanda Polzin of Harker School, who won the top award of $2,500; Margo Cosul, $1,500; Nikhil Marathe of St. Francis, $1,500; and Justin Martin of Live Oak, $1,500.

The winners had to submit essays, explaining their participation in high school sports and how it aided them in overcoming adversity on the field, in the classroom and in life. Among the difficulties faced by the students were poverty, abuse, physical disabilities, disease and other such afflictions.

The other nominees included Nick Aurelio and Timothy Danser of Bellarmine; Brittany Baza, Joeseph Maes and Filip Novachkov of Fremont; Esperanza Sanchez of Gilroy; Ahmed Abdi, Eric Espinoza, Maria Luisa Flores, Jorge Mendoza and Venese Morgan of Gunderson; Carolyn Finney of Independence; Jose Ramirez of Lincoln; Tyler Fischer-Colbrie, Katherine Near, Minh Nguyen and Matthew Yu of Monta Vista; Priscilla Arzate, Juan Castillo, Julio Gomez and Kao Saetern of Overfelt; Brianna Clay and Kheaton Scott of Palo Alto; Jenna Brogan of Presentation; Sioeli Fakalata and Sela Paini of St. Francis; Britteny Westphal of Santa Teresa; Nick Twitchell of Westmont; and Maria Sosa of Willow Glen.